2. A REVIEW OF THE GLOBALIZATION LITERATURE
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difficult to accept. Factory managers often do not change their labor management practices until external events force experimentation. Anti-sweatshop activity appears to have had a hand in precipitating precisely this type of experimentation in innovative labor practices in global apparel supply; these changes have turned out to be both more humane and more productive. Sabel, O’Rourke, and Fung (2000) provide a critical assessment of the process and mechanisms through which multinationals may affect working conditions in global supply chains. They argue that corporations with far-flung global supply chains have “mastered the disciplines that foster excellence and innovation among their own … suppliers” (Sabel, O’Rourke, and Fung 2000, 1). The specific knowledge these firms have about continuous improvement in production efficiency and product quality can be turned toward social concerns, as well. Through setting their own corporate codes of conduct, educating factories on acceptable labor management practices, and partnering with NGOs that deliver services to workers and monitor working conditions, corporations with global supply chains can meaningfully improve the lives of workers and model exemplary corporate behavior for their competitors. Okada (2004) calls such supply chains learning chains. In streamlined global supply chains, “…modes of knowledge and skill diffusion are becoming increasingly explicit, standardized, and codified. Codification and standardization facilitate the process of accumulating and sharing common knowledge within the supply chain” (Okada 2004, 1281). Riisgaard (2005) details the 2001 agreement between Chiquita and COLSIBA (the Coordination of Latin American Banana Workers Unions). Corporations that engage in a program of continuous improvement in labor practices may be rewarded by socially conscious consumers and stockholders. Price, quality, and productivity benefits may also accrue, to the extent that these more humane work practices are also more efficient. Anecdotal evidence supports Sabel, O’Rourke, and Fung’s (2000) theory. Compliance with corporate codes of conduct began as a policing operation during the early 1990s. Over time, however, some compliance officers became increasingly discontented with the check-list approach to compliance. One compliance officer described his practice of adopting a more holistic approach. Rather than simply noting a factory’s compliance with a list of working conditions, the compliance office has begun to take each example of a failure to comply as an opportunity to teach factory management about strategies for improving its production process. In one example, the compliance officer noted that a recent change in the layout of the production floor had exposed workers to a new safety hazard. The compliance officer took the opportunity to point out to the factory that it did not have a strategy for “managing change.” He then discussed with the factory the range of issues that must be addressed systematically each time a change in the production process is contemplated.9 Consider two further illustrations from apparel manufacturing. Compliance officers commonly focus attention on low average wages and long hours of work. Inevitably, policing wages and hours of work led some compliance officers to consider the core cause of low worker productivity.10 During factory inspections, it was common to observe some idle workers and others with piles of garment components next to their workstations. Ultimately, compliance personnel were able to link the inefficient allocation of work on the floor to low factory productivity and, therefore, low wages and long hours of work.